WYSIWYG Collaborative Editing for Interactive Walkthroughs
Find Innovative SolutionsGenerate Solutions
Solution Overview
Problem
Existing authoring and collaboration tools make it cumbersome to merge changes and decisions proposed by contributors and co-authors of a document, and authors do not know the consequences of proposed changes until the software development phase is completed, leading to tedious and error-prone review processes.
Innovation Solution
A WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) environment is implemented for collaborative editing, allowing authors to view and manipulate document layouts without typing code, with a publisher collaboration engine creating WYSIWYG outputs of proposed changes, enabling authors to preview and merge changes from co-authors in a graphical user interface, while maintaining the original content intact.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Ease of operation
If traditional authoring and collaboration tools are used to merge changes proposed by contributors, then the review process becomes tedious and error-prone, but implementing a WYSIWYG collaborative editing environment requires complex system architecture and real-time synchronization capabilities
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces a collaboration engine as an intermediary component that mediates between multiple contributors and the base walkthrough. This engine handles the complex tasks of receiving proposals, generating previews, and managing versions, thereby shielding users from the underlying system complexity while enabling seamless collaborative editing with real-time preview capabilities.
2Reliability
If authors manually review and test proposed changes before incorporation, then errors can be caught early, but the review process becomes time-consuming and delays content publication
Solution Approach 1:
The system performs preliminary actions by automatically generating WYSIWYG previews of proposed changes before they are committed to the base walkthrough. This allows authors to review and detect errors in advance through visual inspection of the rendered output, enabling thorough error detection without requiring time-consuming manual testing or delays in the publication process.
3Productivity
If contributors can freely edit the base walkthrough, then collaboration efficiency increases, but the integrity and consistency of the original content may be compromised
Solution Approach 1:
The patent segments the editing process into distinct components: the immutable base walkthrough and the editable proposal. Contributors work on segmented proposal content that is isolated from the base walkthrough until approved. This segmentation allows multiple contributors to work simultaneously with high efficiency while the base walkthrough remains protected and consistent, as changes are applied only after validation through the preview mechanism.
Data Source
AI summary
The technology disclosed supports content collaboration between any number of users and systems by constructing WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) outputs of changes proposed by the users to a shared live application or to a document such as code, text, or graphics. The technology disclosed allows authors to update consumer facing content instantaneously based on walkthrough feedback from other contributors or coauthors. Further, the authors, without requiring technical expertise of a developer, can immediately see the consequences of incorporating changes suggested by the contributing authors, based on the WYSIWYG outputs of the changes proposed by the authors.